Acer expands Aspire line with budget, multimedia notebooks

Ever determined to supplant HP in the PC market, Acer unleashed a volley of Aspire notebooks today, ranging from budget to full-bore multimedia machines. Starting at $700, the 15.6-inch Aspire AS5745 and 17.3-inch AS7745 make use of Intel's Core i3, i5 and i7 processors, up to 16GB of RAM with all four slots populated, 250GB to 500GB of storage, and some carry Blu-ray drives.